Exams are looming and Will is getting stressed. Meanwhile, Jay has got other things on his mind, and Simon at last seems to be making some headway with Carli who he is helping to revise - albeit at the expense of his own revision.
This episode contains examples of:
- All for Nothing: Will's infamous energy drink induced shit in his pants during an exam and the stressful study and lack of sleep leading up to it end up being fruitless, as he notes in the intro for series 3's opening episode that he ended up failing his exams anyway. Also, Simon and Jay are too focused on winning their love interests' affections to actually study, and not only are they implied to do a terrible job at their exams, but both girls leave them.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Will, thanks to stress and overindulgence in energy drinks, suffers explosive diarrhoea and shits himself during his final exam. Leads to a Running Gag in series 3, where every new person Will meets instantly recognizes him as "the kid who shit himself in the exam."
- Caffeine Failure: Will is overworking himself and relying on energy drinks and caffeine pills to keep him awake whilst revising. His revision efforts go horribly wrong, with him failing to understand anything he reads no matter how many times he reads it, and starting to get confused over what certain words mean. Simon suggests he get more sleep and stop drinking energy drinks, but Will refuses, insisting that they help. Eventually Will shits himself while taken his last exam.
- Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: Jay towards Chloe. ("I don't want you to feel rushed. But I want you to know that if you do want to touch me down there, I'd be totally fine with that"). When she dumps him for being too clingy, he returns to his old ways immediately, tearfully insisting that he dumped her ("She was frigid...and she wouldn't go for a threesome I organised with a top lezzer model...and my cock was too big for her!").
- Chivalrous Pervert: Incredibly, Jay turns out to be one of these in the only episode where he's actually in a relationship. Unfortunately, his dad gives him some terrible advice that led to him acting in a rather possessive fashion, causing him to get dumped.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Jay gets pretty obsessive and possessive over his girlfriend though, he is quite gentle about it (and following his dad's really bad advice).
- Did Not Get the Girl: Played painfully straight with Simon and Jay.
- Simon finally gets to share a passionate kiss with Carli, but before the episode is even over, she decides to reunite with Tom instead and pretends that nothing happened.
- Jay finally gets a girlfriend and is actually nice and respectful towards her, only to ruin it by listening to his dad's advice and become annoyingly clingy, prompting her to dump for being "too sensitive".
- Foreshadowing:
- Regarding the power drinks Will has been taken during revision - "Think of your stomach though. Even one of those drinks makes my shits come out too fast".
- When Will turns up at the pub near the end of the episode, Neil asks why he's dressed the way he is, asking, "Are you doing a fashion show or something?" Come the next episode, Will (and Simon) do exactly that.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: After shitting his pants in the middle of an exam and probably failing, Will rocks up at the pub and quickly downs four pints of lager in quick succession, content that his life cannot get any worse.
- Implausible Deniability: Defied. After shitting himself in an exam, Will instead chooses to accept what happened instead of denying it or covering it up. Nobody will ever forget how he shat himself in front of the school and nobody will stop reminding him of it, so he just accepts his title as "the guy who shat himself in an exam". In the narration, he admits that he's now free from peer pressure and social convention because he's at the very bottom of the social totem pole and will never leave that position for the rest of his school year.
- The Internet Is for Porn:Jay: He's probably on the internet looking up the answers to the exam questions.Neil: And then having a wank.Jay: What?Neil: Well, it's impossible, innit? I don't think I've ever been on the internet and not ended up having a wank.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Mr. Gilbert only refuses to let Will go to the bathroom during his exam because he had already allowed him to go three times earlier in the same hour; it's perfectly reasonable for him to at that point become suspicious that Will could be using the repeated trips as a way to cheat.
- Ladykiller in Love: Jay becomes this after meeting Chloe and repeatedly tells Neil off for saying the kind of crude things about her that Jay is always saying about his fake conquests (you know he's serious about her when he doesn't even pretend they've had sex). Tragically he gets so worried that she's seeing other guys he manages to blow his chance with her.
- Laser-Guided Karma: When Jay finally gets himself a girlfriend, what happens? He goes to his dad for help, who ends up giving him really bad advice for keeping her interested in him and it ends up driving her away. It'd be easy to feel sorry for him in the moment until you realise it's exactly what he's been doing to his friends the whole time; giving them bad advice on getting girls that will blow up in their faces.
- "Last Day of School" Plot: The episode focuses on the end of the term, and the climax takes place on the last day of school. The characters prepare for their exams and vow to meet up at the pub after they are over. The pub night serves as a sort of Call-Back to the pub night the boys much less successfully attended the first week of school in the first episode — Will actually gets served this time and proceeds to get trashed, and the rest of them bond as they comfort Jay (whose new girlfriend just dumped him), and Will reminisces about their year together.
- Pet the Dog: Mr. Gilbert doesn't disqualify Jay for having his phone out, despite having every right to do so and after Will shits himself, he leads him quietly out of the exam with as little fuss as possible.
- Refuge in Audacity: The one time Will really pulls this off is in the aftermath of the "shitting himself in the exam" incident, a low point even by the standards of this show. Several hours later Will, who is at this point still seventeen, rocks up to the pub wearing his school blazer and a pair of replacement tracksuit trousers from lost property while carrying his soiled clothes in a plastic bag. He orders a pint and is pleasantly surprised to actually get served. He then orders three more pints and downs them in quick succession. He also cheerfully and shamelessly tells the full unvarnished story to anybody who asks - on the grounds that since his reputation is already literally in the shitter, there's not much point trying to cover it up or deny it.
- Sanity Slippage: When it comes to exams, Will gets himself so worked up that he resorts to subsisting on energy drinks, which has two major effects on him; A. He can't sleep and B. He ends up shitting himself during his final exam. When the whole ordeal is done and he completes his exam, he turns up to the pub in his school uniform, minus the trousers, instead wearing an old tracksuit pants from lost property and carrying his soiled clothes in a plastic bag. When the other lads ask him if he's gone mad, he replies that he quite possibly has.
- Selective Enforcement: When Will responds to one of Jay's characteristic tirades of insults and innuendo with a snide remark about his bursting into tears when his girlfriend dumped him, the other three are offended.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Used on Will after he brings up Jay's girlfriend making him cry after too many insults. Treated as serious business and completely ignoring all the other insults Jay uses against Will. Possibly justified, in that while the guys humour Jay's bullshit, Simon and Will at least seem pretty aware that she was probably the only girl he'd ever been with, and certainly the only one he'd ever had real feelings for. It seems to be an unwritten moral norm (more or less the only norm) in the group that bad break-ups are serious business and the victim should be respected. When Will was dumped somewhat cruelly by Charlotte, Simon and Jay were quick to try to cheer him up, and they avoid bringing up his short relationship with her unless Will himself mentions it. So when Will points out Jay's break-up in a rather blunt way, he breaks the norm even though Jay has complied with it to him. That way, it actually makes sense, though Will (who is not always good with unwritten norms) finds it weird.
